---

There is undoubtedly general agreement that the efficiency of educational investments should he maximized through the managerial process as far as possible. Agricultural extension is one of the crucial tasks in developing agricultural societies calling for considerable consumption of intellectual investment. The management of agricultural extension projects (AEPs) however, needs careful planning in utilizing this investment specially in terms of meeting the right clientele. This paper reports on the use of a statistical device which can be applied for planning the social modeling of agricultural extension programs. This statistical device, the so-called Dichotomous Distribution of the Extension Clientele (DDEC) was designed and used by the author to determine the social modeling of agricultural extension projects in Iran and the degree to which the extension projects have been successful in reaching their target clientele. The procedure consisted of four major criteria: farmers, educational needs, participation in AEP: access to utilities needed for adoption and utilization of the innovation (advice given by the extension agents). As a result of using this method and interviewing 912 farmers throught 57 randomly selected AEPs, it was found that 66 percent of the projects in 1988 and 60 percent in 1989 were thoroughly efficient, and 16 percent in 1988 and 12 percent in 1989 were efficient. Four projects in each year were found to have a very low efficiency rate while one project in 1988 and four projects in 1989 were inefficient in terms of their social modeling. This procedur has been applied to study the social modeling along with the efficiency of the extension projects dealing with the biological control of rice stenborer in eastern part of Mazandaran province where rice is the dominant cash crop. Acording to this result obtained from the recent research projects, it was shown that the less differences among the number of trained farmers and the target groups the more efficient were the extension project In addition, there was statistically significant difference among those of target groups and none target groups in term of applying the extension boicontrol guidlines in rice production practices. The related extension projects were also efficient (r=0.73) in term of their social modelings.

---

The role of public financial institutions in agricultural education and extension has received less attention. In this study, quantitative SWOT analysis was used to determine the strategy of the Agricultural Bank of Iran in education and extension of entrepreneurship and innovation in agriculture sector. Based on the literature review and global experiences, the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) framework was considered. For this purpose, the multi-criteria decision making models were used along with the combination of SWOT and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodologies. The analysis of AHP-SWOT results in two-dimensional graphic space emphasizes the need for the bank to adopt aggressive strategies, which means following different combinations of the mentioned strengths and opportunities. According to the findings of this research, the most important strengths of the bank and the coefficient of importance of each (in parentheses) include branches across the country (0.6), trust in the bank as a governmental institution (0.25), and the developmental nature of the bank (0.15). The most important opportunities include the possibility of increasing productivity in the agricultural sector (0.35), innovation in financial area (0.28), international cooperation (0.24), and Internet impact and cyberspace (0.13). This study provides new insights into the role of a financial institution from the perspective of education and extension in agricultural sector.  The important novelty of this study is that it develops a framework in which the preferred strategy of public institution can be identified in PPP programs.